Fiona Range

by Mary McGarry Morris

  Shoving her cards into the pile, Maggie announced she didn’t want to play anymore. Lucy followed her sister’s lead.

  “Well, what about me?” Jack called, pretending to chase after them as they flew off in search of Elizabeth.

  “And what was that all about?” Fiona asked.

  Her aunt shook her head and sighed. “They’re like two little wood sprites. They’re absolutely devoted to one another. Lucy’s the more delicate of the two. And Maggie, well, as you can see, she’s a little pepperpot.”

  “She’s a rude little thing, I’ll say that for her.” Fiona put the lid on the pan.

  Aunt Arlene laughed. “Actually she reminds me a lot of you.”

  “I wasn’t rude!” She spun around. “Was I?”

  “You were a very forthright child.” Her aunt smiled. “But no. You were never rude.”

  Cheers rose from the den where Uncle Charles, Rudy, Ginny, and Susan were watching a football game. There was a squeal in the hallway, now racing footsteps as the twins ran upstairs calling, “Miss Hollis! Miss Hollis, Rudy wants you to come down!”

  Fiona opened the door and looked into the hallway, but Rudy wasn’t there. So far they hadn’t been in the same room for more than a few seconds at a time. He seemed not only ill at ease in her presence, but so subdued that on his last trip into the kitchen her aunt had felt his forehead to see if he had a temperature. He looked flushed. His cheeks were bright red. She was sure he was coming down with something, she said. No, just tired, he assured her, avoiding Fiona’s stare.

  Now with the potatoes mashed there was nothing else to wait for, was there? Fiona asked as she opened the oven. She began to pull out the turkey pan, but her aunt insisted she wait; it was too heavy to lift by herself. Actually, all that was left now, Aunt Arlene said with a grunt as she turned the corkscrew into a bottle of white wine, was the cook’s toast. Fiona said she’d go get Susan and Ginny, who had helped with most of the preparations.

  “No dear, I’d like it to be just us,” her aunt said. She handed Fiona a glass and took up her own.

  “To another great Thanksgiving, thanks to you, Aunt Arlene.” Fiona raised her glass. “And one more perfect turkey!” It was traditional that the cook and her helpers started celebrating first.

  “And to you, my dear Fiona,” her aunt said, touching her glass to Fiona’s. “I love you.” She smiled and patted her cheek. “We can’t say that enough, can we? It’s as important to say it as it is to hear.”

  “Aunt Arlene!” Fiona was alarmed to see her aunt’s eyes filling with tears. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong,” her aunt assured her. “It’s just you remind me so much of your mother. The other night after I saw her locket I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking of her and remembering how close we were. And then I got up and came downstairs. Elizabeth heard me. She thought I was upset because of her. But I told her how it was my sister—that I missed my sister so much. And you know what she said? She said, ‘But Mother, thank goodness you have Fiona.’ It’s true. And I don’t think I’ve ever actually thought of it in quite that way, but I’m so glad I have you,” she whispered, then hugged her again, this time with a desperate ferocity. “I am! I’m so glad, so very, very glad.”

  Fiona closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Her aunt pulled back to look at her. “I hope you know how much you mean to us.”

  Fiona nodded and made herself smile.

  “I mean to all of us—your cousins, me, your uncle. Especially your uncle, Fiona. I know he may not always show it, but he loves you dearly. Dearly, Fiona.” Her voice broke, and she had to take a deep breath. “You have a very special place in his heart. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Fiona said as they took up the glasses and began to sip their wine. She did know that and knew as well how cramped a place it was from all the times she had been unable to fit into it. But today her aunt deserved only happiness, or at least the comfort of its façade.

  A few minutes later Rudy hurried into the kitchen, then stopped as if surprised to find Fiona there.

  “Rudy! Just the man I need,” her aunt said, opening the oven door. She asked if he’d take out the turkey for her. “Give him the oven mitts,” she told Fiona.

  “Oven mitts,” Fiona repeated, slapping them into his hand as if he were a surgeon. She kept trying to catch his eye as he lifted the turkey onto the counter. She wanted to touch the small cut on his chin where he’d nicked himself shaving. When he turned she smiled, but he looked away. As her aunt peeled back the steaming aluminum foil, he declared it the fattest bird he’d ever seen.

  “Um, it is big, isn’t it,” Fiona said, leaning into him so she could see.

  “Fiona, give me that baster, please?” her aunt said, pointing back at the stove. “And Rudy, would you mind telling Elizabeth we’ll be eating in about twenty minutes?”

  “That’s what I came in to tell you,” he said. “She wants to stay in her room. She said she feels shaky. Dizzy or something,” he added wearily.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Fiona said, seeing her aunt’s crestfallen expression. “I’ll get her down,” she promised, emboldened as much by the wine as by the affection that was seeping like warm oil from every pore. She loved her aunt and her cousins, loved them all, but mostly she loved Rudy, she thought with a surge of desire for this dear, awkward, ungainly man knocking over the trash now as he asked her aunt what else he could do.

  “Just get her down here, you and Fiona, please,” her aunt said with a deep sigh.

  She followed him up the stairs. He needed a haircut. The ends of his hair curled over his collar. There were tiny moth holes in the back of his thin gray sweater. On the top step she grabbed his hand and pulled him around the corner into the bathroom. She locked the door and roped her arms around his neck. As she was about to kiss him, he turned away. “Rudy!” she protested as he reached back to remove her hands. “Rudy,” she whispered. She laid her face against his chest. She could hear his heart thumping. She closed her eyes and put her arms around his waist. “You smell so good.” She rubbed his hard, lean back.

  “No, don’t,” he said, standing stiffly against her.

  “Don’t what?” She lifted her mouth to his.

  “No!” He stepped around her and opened the door, then turned back. “Is this it? The only way you can feel anything. Is it? Is it, Fiona?” he demanded, with startling bitterness.

  Nodding, she forced a smile. “I guess I can’t fool you, can I, Dr. Freud?”

  Aunt Arlene had placed a twin on Elizabeth’s left, and one directly across from her. Rudy sat on her right with Fiona next to him. Happy to finally be near Elizabeth, the twins were telling her everything that had happened since she’d been in school. Jack stood to make the toast, his reedy voice buzz-sawing on Fiona’s nerves.

  Rudy’s back was to her as he leaned forward listening to Jack. He finally has a family, she thought, more hurt than angry. That Elizabeth didn’t really love him wasn’t important, as long as the rest of them did.

  There was so much to be thankful for, Jack was saying: his father’s well-deserved appointment to the Superior Court bench. Elizabeth and Rudy’s engagement. Ginny’s baby . . .

  “And Billy Leitener’s got his appendix out!” Lucy suddenly remembered to tell Elizabeth, who smiled wanly and patted the child’s hand.

  “So now he can’t go see the Christmas village!” Maggie leaned forward to add.

  “Shh,” Elizabeth whispered, finger to her lips.

  “And we’re thankful also to be sharing this wonderful day with Maggie and Lucy, our very special guests,” Jack said, winking at them. He thanked his mother for another memorable holiday and for all she did for everyone throughout the year. And of course his father, whose love and devotion to his family was his finest achievement and inspiration for them all.

  “Hear, hear!” Fiona said, raising her glass in her uncle’s direction. She felt badly. No matter how hard J
ack tried, things always seemed to fall flat because he was so stiff and formal. She sympathized with the twins squirming in their seats.

  “And now in closing,” Jack continued, “I’d like to take this opportunity to not only thank my beautiful wife, Susan, for all the happiness she’s given me, but to share . . .”

  “Can I have a roll?” Lucy asked Elizabeth, who stared resolutely up at her brother.

  “Here,” Fiona whispered with a flip of the roll onto the amused child’s plate.

  “. . . some wonderful news . . .”

  “Can I have one too?” Maggie hissed.

  “. . . with all of you.”

  “Sure!” Fiona said, and as she took another roll from the silver basket, felt her aunt’s touch fall lightly on her wrist.

  “Wait, dear,” Aunt Arlene whispered, and Uncle Charles’s disapproving eyes flickered the length of table.

  “We’re going to have a baby. Susan is pregnant! We just found out yesterday!”

  They scrambled from their seats to kiss Susan and hug Jack. Susan couldn’t stop smiling. Tears streamed down Aunt Arlene’s cheeks. Ginny asked what she did first when she found out. Susan admitted that she had gone straight to the mall and bought a maternity outfit.

  “I knew it!” Ginny cried, laughing. “Imagine if it’s a girl,” she told Elizabeth. “Can you just picture what that child’s wardrobe will be like?”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said with a faint smile.

  Halfway through dinner Elizabeth sat back in her chair with her eyes half closed. The gaiety was taking its toll. Her brief energy was being drained by the twins. They not only vied with each other for her attention, but with the family as well. Rudy asked if he could get her anything. She shook her head no. She hadn’t touched her dinner. The talk had returned to babies, and Uncle Charles had just issued what he called his “Grandfather’s mandate.” Both babies’ first trips to Disney World would be with him and Aunt Arlene.

  “That’s not fair!” cried Ginny and Jack, though both were grinning at him, especially Jack, who had finally managed to please his father without any help from anyone, other than Susan, of course. They’re all so screwed up, Fiona thought, and they don’t even know it.

  She asked Rudy if he’d ever been to Disney World. He hadn’t. “Poor thing, then you can go too,” she said, reaching under the table to pat his leg. She left her hand flat on his thigh. He moved his leg, but she did not lift her hand. She grinned at him. She could feel Ginny staring.

  “Well, why don’t you go there on your honeymoon then?” Ginny asked, looking from Elizabeth to Rudy.

  “You should,” Susan agreed. “It’s amazing the number of couples who do.”

  Elizabeth gave a slight nod.

  “I know,” Rudy said. He reached down and removed Fiona’s hand.

  She put it back. “But Lizzie’s already been there,” she said, leaning into him to look at her cousin. “You should go someplace you’ve never been. Someplace new and exotic. And romantic. I can just see it, the two of you in tiny little bikinis laying in each other’s arms in the hot sand on a deserted beach on some tropical island.” She looked at Rudy and dug her fingers into his leg. “You’d probably never come back, would you? I mean, it’s so cold here, and so unfriendly.”

  He had been staring at his plate, nodding. He glanced at her now with a pained smile.

  Ginny asked if her sister remembered their last trip to Disney World. Elizabeth sat very still, head slightly bowed, as if to recall some detail, the pause just long enough to draw everyone’s uneasy attention.

  “Elizabeth?” Uncle Charles finally said. “Are you all right?”

  Eyes closed, she nodded, though her head stayed bent. Rudy put his arm over the back of her chair and asked if she wanted to go upstairs.

  “No,” she said softly as the twins watched with growing concern.

  Ginny suggested she go into the den and rest on the sofa for a few minutes.

  “Are you still sick, Miss Hollis?” Maggie asked.

  “I’m fine,” Elizabeth said in a faint voice.

  “Do you have a headache?” Lucy asked.

  Elizabeth shook her head, unable to answer.

  “I think Miss Hollis is tired,” Uncle Charles said with a great flurry of cutting the rest of Lucy’s turkey, though she had already announced she was finished eating. “It’s hard work being a teacher, you know.”

  “Is Miss Hollis your favorite teacher?” Susan asked the girls.

  “Yes!” Lucy cried.

  “Because she’s the prettiest one in the whole school,” Maggie said.

  “And the nicest too!” Lucy added.

  “Of course she is,” Aunt Arlene agreed, her fearful gaze locked on Elizabeth.

  “I’m sorry,” Elizabeth gasped, burying her face in her napkin.

  “Elizabeth?” Aunt Arlene started to get up.

  Elizabeth looked up with the bunched napkin at her chin. “I’m ruining everyone’s wonderful holiday.”

  “No!”

  “Of course you’re not!”

  “Maggie,” Uncle Charles said quickly. “Tell Miss Hollis we’ve all had our share of down days, and now it’s just her turn, that’s all.”

  “We’ve all had our . . . ,” Maggie began, then shook her head in exasperation, making everyone laugh.

  Fiona rolled her eyes and poured another glass of wine. She looked around as she sipped it. They all began to talk at once, their skillful chatter meant to take the focus off Elizabeth. See? It didn’t matter if she were a little quiet and depressed. They could still have a good time. Ginny and Aunt Arlene were discussing the merits of chestnuts in the stuffing. Susan and Jack were asking Rudy what a saddle block was: Susan didn’t think she wanted natural childbirth.

  And what would be considered natural childbirth? Uncle Charles inquired from his end of the table. The twins giggled and whispered to one another. Fiona shifted in her chair and pressed her leg against Rudy’s. Uncle Charles asked Rudy’s opinion of Memorial’s maternity unit. Rudy said he’d been quite impressed with what he’d seen of it so far.

  Fiona moved her hand higher up his thigh and was amused to see him gulp. He leaned over the table now as Uncle Charles told Ginny he didn’t understand why she’d rather drive all the way into Boston to have the baby instead of just having it at Dearborn Memorial.

  “What if it’s seven-thirty in the morning and you’re stuck in commuter traffic on Ninety-three ready to deliver at any moment?” Uncle Charles asked.

  “Well then,” Ginny said, “I guess I’m—”

  “Screwed!” Fiona burst out, her laughter splintering through the awkward silence like glass shards. She clawed Rudy’s thigh.

  “Just make sure your driver’s got a couple deliveries on his résumé,” Rudy said. His mouth was tight with anger.

  “How about you? Do you have any?” Ginny asked.

  “Yah, is your O-B as good as your G-Y-N?” Fiona murmured, moving her hand again.

  “You just call.” Rudy’s stricken gaze fixed on Ginny. “Day or night and I’ll be there.”

  “Umm,” Fiona sighed. He was becoming aroused.

  Her uncle asked Rudy if he knew Archie Heglund, the newest hospital trustee.

  Rudy cleared his throat. “What was the name again?” he asked, blinking.

  “Archie,” Fiona said, trying not to smile as she leaned closer. She touched his shoulder. “Archie Heglund,” she said softly. His nearness made everything else seem small and out of focus.

  “Uh, no sir. I don’t think I do,” Rudy said, ignoring her.

  Jack spoke up quickly to say he knew Heglund. “We’ve met him!” he told Susan, who agreed. Yes—they’d socialized a few times, though she couldn’t recall exactly where. “Oh yes,” Aunt Arlene said. “He’s the one whose sister married that Indian doctor. Pradish. Pranchis. Something like that, I forget.”

  “Pradiz,” Uncle Charles said in a pained voice from the end of the table. “Dr. Pradiz.”


  “Yes, Pradiz,” someone said.

  “Pradiz,” Fiona repeated, still amused by their earnest chatter that seemed to be disappearing down a deep hole right now. It was silent. The chimes in the hallway clock sounded.

  “Fiona, would you help me with something out in the kitchen for a minute?” Ginny asked, rising abruptly. She stood in the doorway, waiting. “What in God’s name are you doing?” she hissed the minute the door closed behind them.

  Fiona stared back a little dizzily. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She steadied herself against the counter.

  “Yes you do, and so does everyone else, but we’re all trying to act like it’s not really happening.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Fiona, don’t do this. Please, not to your own cousin. My God! Not here! Not in your own family!” Ginny said with a shudder of disgust.

  “Fuck you.” She turned to walk away, but Ginny held out her hand.

  “You know, I used to feel badly for you. I used to think it was just your way of getting attention. But not anymore. Because you’re mean, Fiona. You’re mean and you’re selfish. You don’t give a damn about anyone else but yourself.”

  “Get out of my way,” she hissed back.

  “No, you listen to me,” Ginny said, her wide, mannish face at Fiona’s. “Elizabeth’s confused enough. Don’t ruin this for her. Don’t take advantage of her when she’s like this. And don’t have anything else to drink!” With that, Ginny pushed the door, smiling as she held it open for Fiona.

  Fiona was trembling as she sat down. She poured herself more wine, then stared at Ginny and took a sip. Her hand shook as she set it down. She didn’t even want it. Her stomach hurt. Elizabeth smiled now as the twins tried to tell the same story. Rudy was telling Aunt Arlene how to make Chinese pancakes. Each detail only seemed to enchant her more, her aunt who hated Chinese food, her toothy, horse-faced aunt, this calculating woman whose own blood came first, whose caring had always been more antidote than affection. Look at them all, so smug and safe in their pretenses. She shouldn’t have come back in here. She should just get up now and go to Patrick’s, even though she’d made about as big a mess of that as she had everything else. But screwed up as Patrick was, at least he cared about her, while no one here really even wanted her around. She had become an obligation, and a dreadful one at that. They never enjoyed her company or cared what she thought. They didn’t know anything about her, didn’t want to know, yet she knew everything about them. Silence burned in her throat with their burgeoning jocularity. “Be good,” Lizzie had pleaded in her childhood notes under the door. “That’s all they want, just for you to be good.” Fiona was a thirty-year-old woman. Thirty years old, but at their table still a child. Ginny and Jack burst out laughing at something Susan had just said. Fiona reached across the table and picked up the slumped cranberry mold, balancing the plate in her palm. Her aunt’s token serving was an uneaten blob on her dish. No one else had wanted any of the blood-red, runny mess made by a trashy slut who couldn’t do anything right, much less get gelatin to set. She offered the plate to Rudy and asked if he’d like some.